Thursday, August 10, 2023

70's Italian Horror Part Eighteen

THE DEVIL'S LOVER
(1972)
Dir - Paolo Lombardo
Overall: WOOF

Out of the gargantuan number of low-rent, Gothic horror films that Italy churned out in its heyday, The Devil's Lover, (L'amante del demonio, Ceremonia Satanica, Lucifera: Demon Lover, La Amante del demonio, The Demon Lover), ranks as one of the most top-to-bottom laziest.  This could be due to writer Paolo Lombardo's inexperience from behind the lens, this standing as his second of only three directorial efforts.  It could also be the clearly non-existent budget which seemingly could only afford a few simple period costumes and a spacious abode to utilize only a handful of rooms in.  The story itself is a combination of the laughably stupid and (above all else), insultingly boring as three women check out a haunted castle just to have something to do, only for one of them to quickly fall asleep and then dream the entire movie as a flashback before waking up, smiling, and driving away.  Every scene is either all talking, all walking, or all standing around and the plot line is so aggressively uninteresting as to be incomprehensible.  Euro scream queen Rosalba Neri provides the eye candy and does her best, but the material she has to work with is void of all substance and fails as trash, atmospheric horror, and melodrama all at once.
 
FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS
(1974)
Dir - Dick Randall/Mario Mancini
Overall: MEH

An oddity amongst Euro-horror in the fact that no official director has ever been confirmed to have made it, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, (Terror! Il castello delle donne maledette, Terror Castle, The House of Freaks, The Monsters of Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, Frankenstein's Castle), is a hugely unmemorable offering.  Loaded with cliches for the mere sake of them and adhering to only the most bare-bones mad scientist themes that countless other Frankenstein adaptations have tackled, (though calling this an "adaptation" of Marry Shelley's novel is an erroneous stretch), it tacks on the usual amount of rape, sleaze, and arduous pacing that is almost universally found in other Italian trash exports.  Here, Frankenstein is called Count instead of doctor most of the time and one of the actors was billed as Boris Lugosi, so clearly some attempt was made to make it a throwback of some sorts to the Universal monster days.  Unfortunately, these minor details mixed with neanderthal men living in caves, naked women, a dwarf who only behaves in the horniest and most moronic fashion possible, angry villagers, a dreadfully talky script, plus laughably crude set design and makeup effects renders the whole thing instantly forgettable.

A WHISPER IN THE DARK
(1976)
Dir - Marcello Aliprandi
Overall: MEH

The third full length from director Marcello Aliprandi and the only one to be explicitly in the supernatural horror vein, A Whisper in the Dark, (Un sussurro nel buio), is unremarkable stuff.  Over long, overtly talky, and played too straight to be campy, it fails to navigate its imaginary friend premise in an effectively eerie manner.  Instead, it underplays its otherwordly elements to the point where they are largely undetected.  This seems to be intentional in presenting all of the strange occurrences as ones that can be argued amongst characters in a cliched manner where the women who believe them are hysterically impressionable and the strong-willed men who scoff at them are logical and condescending.  The ghostly mystery at the center of things is not that interesting to begin with so having few if any spooky set pieces, only mildly troubling events transpiring, and a hugely weak ending makes the whole thing fall flat.  That said, some of the cinematography by Claudio Cirillo is intimately atmospheric, Pino Donaggio's score is deliciously Italian, John Phillip Law brings some of his usual charming intensity to the table, Joseph Cotten is present if mostly wasted, and the little kids are comparatively less annoying than they are in other Italian exports from the time period.

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